Recently Microsoft announced that Windows Phone 8 would come with the new Internet Explorer 10 browser too. And today, Nov. 8, Microsoft has detailed the differences between its Internet Explorer 10 (IE 10) for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 ahead of the release of the mobile operating system (OS) in the US.

Microsoft’s principal program manager lead Charles Morris said in a post on its developer blog that though both versions share many similar features, the IE 10 web browser is not identical on both mobile and PC systems.

IE 10 deals with effects such as 3D transforms, shadows for both text and boxes in websites and support for more fonts. The hardware accelerated rendering function also allows transitions and animations to run independently of the main browser thread for better performance.

“By popular demand we now have full support for Web Open Font Format (WOFF) on Windows Phone. Better yet, our friends from Typekit, who provide a super popular library to add cool fonts to any website, announced official support for Windows Phone 8,” Morris said.

However, IE 10 on Windows Phone 8 does not support inline video nor does it support new manipulation views for touch panning and zooming (except for -ms-touch-action). IE 10 on Windows Phone 8 also doesn’t support multi-track HTML5 audio, ActiveX, VBScript, drag-and-drop APIs, or file access APIs. Features such as link previews, pinned site icons and notifications, as well as support for connecting sites to apps is also not supported.

Making IE 10 to web and app developers as part of Windows Phone 8, Morris said, “Now that the software development kit (SDK) is available, it is a great time for you to use the included emulator to test your sites directly on Windows Phone 8.”

Will these differences make IE 10 on Windows Phone 8 less effective and convenient?